this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

Because whoever is running the government, they're going to look a lot more favorably on anything that brings them money.

We don't pay taxes because that's the law. We pay taxes because the government will take our stuff and lock us in a cage with butt rapists if we don't pay.

AcneVulgaris:proteus_b: this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

Because whoever is running the government, they're going to look a lot more favorably on anything that brings them money.

We don't pay taxes because that's the law. We pay taxes because the government will take our stuff and lock us in a cage with butt rapists if we don't pay.

I pay taxes because it's part of the social contract. I like having things like well-maintained roads, bridges, clean water, police, and all the other things that our tax dollars pay for. I have no problem paying taxes because I can walk outside and immediately see a dozen things those dollars contributed toward.

In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

because the government generally doesn't have a holy war after things they "tax and regulate".

You know what the ironic thing is? Cartels expect some shipment to be busted.Hell they have been known to setup some shipments to be busted.

See with asset forfeiture, they know that cops are benefiting from their operations. They consider The War On Drugs to be another bribe to be paid, but in Foosball tables of the break rooms and mini-tanks instead of outright cash.

NURBS:In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

It should be taxed because the government needs to generate money for things like roads and schools. It should be regulated to try and prevent young children from using it when (as research seems to indicate) it can be detrimental to their psychological development when used regularly.

The key to the whole issue is to balance taxation/regulation with retail cost. If it's taxed too heavily or is subject to too much regulation, the retail cost will be high enough that there will still be significant profits to be made from illicit production and sale. We need a system where relatively small-scale clandestine growing operations can't be significantly profitable when forced to compete with huge, multi-million dollar legal operations.

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

Honestly, I think it's because no one wants to stand up and say they think it should be legal because it is perfectly acceptable to just want to get high. They have to hide behind health benefits and economic benefits because just doing it because they like it is still unacceptable for some reason.

I like to think of myself as something of a beer enthusiast, and while I'm sure my taste in the stuff could be critiqued heavily by other members of this illustrious website, I enjoy trying new beers and drinking quality instead of swill. But you know what? I also like getting drunk.

I should add that I'm not opposed to it being taxed, and I'm not some "it should be, like, FREE, man!" idiot, but at the same time the laws governing this stuff (alcohol included) in this country are just buttfark retarded.

jayhawk88:NURBS: In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

Quaker:It should be taxed because the government needs to generate money for things like roads and schools. It should be regulated to try and prevent young children from using it when (as research seems to indicate) it can be detrimental to their psychological development when used regularly.

Then we should tax the internet higher, and certainly regulate it much more strongly. Also restaurants and processed foods should be taxed at phenomenal levels, and probably regulated into extinction, considering the costs they inflict on the health of Americans...

miniflea:Honestly, I think it's because no one wants to stand up and say they think it should be legal because it is perfectly acceptable to just want to get high. They have to hide behind health benefits and economic benefits because just doing it because they like it is still unacceptable for some reason.

And the greatest irony - Is that the politicians and lawyers spend so much time hyping that it's a dangerously addictive drug... 3-4 hours after drinking a pot of coffee because "they can't wake up and face the world otherwise".

I just got back from a nice, relaxing wake and bake, so I'm getting a kick. All I know, is that I woke up pissed off at the world and my face hurts from grinding my teeth so much lately. After a bowl, I am feeling alright with the world and am about to set on a bike ride, because well...fark it. I'm worrying about nothing, and everything is fine...but for some reason lately, I have been getting twisted over bullshiat. I could take my Lexapro, that is expensive and makes me feel like I don't care...but not in a good way. On that shiat, I don't want to eat, fark, work, or do anything, I just want to sit and be mild-mannered about everything. It sucks. Weed does the trick in a few minutes, it lets my mind relax and then I remember what it is about my life that I enjoy.

Oh no, where am I? It's so dark here in the shadows. What am I doing here? What was I seeking? What is this 'shadow' world before me? I here must rely not upon mine eyes in these shadows but upon my NOSE! My nose shall seek thee, oh sacred herb. My nose shall find thee in these dark, dark regions.

I've always felt like the medical marijuana thing was absolute crap....and I say this as someone who lived in Colorado and had one.

There is nothing 'medical' about it. Yes, if you try really hard you can find some legit people who use the drug as intended (for medical purposes). 99% of the people I ran into at the dispensary were just like me - young, reasonably fit, reasonably healthy, people who wanted to smoke weed and were happy enough to pay extra for it.

Personally, I think recreational drugs should be legal. Weed should be one. But if you want to call it 'medical marijuana' it should be tightly enforced. The place I went to had a TWO PAGE ad in the newspaper showing it's deals/prices and advertising that they would have doctors on staff at hours X,Y and Z for prescriptions. No medical records unnecessary, cash only.

I went and said, 'Ummm, well, my back hurts.' and that was all I needed. In total I paid $300 and left with some baked goodies.

"Medical marijuana" was wrongly believed to be a path to legalization by some. I think it should be legal for recreational use. The few legitimate studies done seem to indicate that it is mostly harmless to the body, so let responsible adults use it as they please. I don't think it should be advertised nor do I think it needs to be. I also think all alcohol ads should be banned from TV/cable.

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

Because revenue is good and could be spent on recovery and cleanup of the damage to society (yes it exists) of drug use.

proteus_b:Quaker: It should be taxed because the government needs to generate money for things like roads and schools. It should be regulated to try and prevent young children from using it when (as research seems to indicate) it can be detrimental to their psychological development when used regularly.

Then we should tax the internet higher, and certainly regulate it much more strongly. Also restaurants and processed foods should be taxed at phenomenal levels, and probably regulated into extinction, considering the costs they inflict on the health of Americans...

Fark_Guy_Rob:I've always felt like the medical marijuana thing was absolute crap....and I say this as someone who lived in Colorado and had one.

There is nothing 'medical' about it. Yes, if you try really hard you can find some legit people who use the drug as intended (for medical purposes). 99% of the people I ran into at the dispensary were just like me - young, reasonably fit, reasonably healthy, people who wanted to smoke weed and were happy enough to pay extra for it.

Personally, I think recreational drugs should be legal. Weed should be one. But if you want to call it 'medical marijuana' it should be tightly enforced. The place I went to had a TWO PAGE ad in the newspaper showing it's deals/prices and advertising that they would have doctors on staff at hours X,Y and Z for prescriptions. No medical records unnecessary, cash only.

I went and said, 'Ummm, well, my back hurts.' and that was all I needed. In total I paid $300 and left with some baked goodies.

Same goes for any pain medication, anxiety medication, hunger stimulant, or sleeping pill, along with no doubt a host of things I've left out.

All I need to do is talk to my pcp about any of those things. He'll have a sample for me to try for a while and a prescription to follow if I like it.

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

SamFlagg:Legalize it, tax it, regulate it like alcohol for any driving related offenses (I don't think we need public intoxication applied for weed) and regulate it like smoking for the smoke part.

Then everyone can go toke up, pay their taxes, quit their whining and toke up.

Preemptive response for the idiots now that driving has been brought up:

We dont need a tool, often poorly calibrated, to measure an imperfectly correlated third variable in order to enforce driving sober in a world with legal drugs. Field sobriety testing should be sufficient.

Smackledorfer:SamFlagg: Legalize it, tax it, regulate it like alcohol for any driving related offenses (I don't think we need public intoxication applied for weed) and regulate it like smoking for the smoke part.

Then everyone can go toke up, pay their taxes, quit their whining and toke up.

Preemptive response for the idiots now that driving has been brought up:

We dont need a tool, often poorly calibrated, to measure an imperfectly correlated third variable in order to enforce driving sober in a world with legal drugs. Field sobriety testing should be sufficient.

I'm more or less in agreement with you. (I'll also say that I know the intoxication isn't a one to one, but let's be serious a path to legalization of pot for everybody is going to have to deal with the smoking and alcohol standards relating to smoke and intoxication.)

Smackledorfer:We dont need a tool, often poorly calibrated, to measure an imperfectly correlated third variable in order to enforce driving sober in a world with legal drugs. Field sobriety testing should be sufficient.

Yep, that's what's done here in Cali where MMJ is legal and widespread, and it seems to work very well. Holds up well in court. Agnostic to the cause of the insobriety. Easy and quick to administer.

NURBS:AcneVulgaris: proteus_b: this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

Because whoever is running the government, they're going to look a lot more favorably on anything that brings them money.

We don't pay taxes because that's the law. We pay taxes because the government will take our stuff and lock us in a cage with butt rapists if we don't pay.

I pay taxes because it's part of the social contract. I like having things like well-maintained roads, bridges, clean water, police, and all the other things that our tax dollars pay for. I have no problem paying taxes because I can walk outside and immediately see a dozen things those dollars contributed toward.

In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

Is fraud, redundant government, crony contracts, etc part of that? Or do we just accept that as price of doing business?

jayhawk88:NURBS: In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF MY PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE!

It used to be a lot easier and cheaper to create that infrastructure before government started regulating itself so much. Do you honestly think we could make the Hoover dam at this point?

MFAWG:jayhawk88: NURBS: In order to have a functioning society, the government is going to have to spend money. That money, for the most part, comes from taxes. So again, taxes don't bother me -- it's all just part of living in modern society with all the modern amenities.

I warned everyone of the coming backlash. Soon they'll be rounding up the cardholders. The entrenched government bureaucracies ( federal, state and local law enforcement, lawyers, prisons, etc ) cannot exist without pot remaining illegal. It will never go away unless a bigger 'cause' emerges. These agencies began in the 1930s when federal agents no longer had alcohol as a targeted revenue source. Do you think they want another repeal of a law that sustains their very livelihoods?

/ you all come down on welfare foodstampers, yet ignore the murderously criminal traitors within

proteus_b:this is why i've never understood the D-tards who insist that marijuana should be "taxed and regulated". why should it be taxed? why should it be regulated? the default answer is that it should not be, until you can show a good reason tor such coercion...

StoneColdAtheist:Smackledorfer: We dont need a tool, often poorly calibrated, to measure an imperfectly correlated third variable in order to enforce driving sober in a world with legal drugs. Field sobriety testing should be sufficient.

Yep, that's what's done here in Cali where MMJ is legal and widespread, and it seems to work very well. Holds up well in court. Agnostic to the cause of the insobriety. Easy and quick to administer.

Not really. Some medical conditions leave you legal to drive but incapable of passing field sobriety tests. There's needs to be another test available for those cases that doesn't involve dragging the unfortunate sick person in to the county jail every time they get pulled over.

Old news is old. They hit us real hard last year around December, and that's when guys like this were jumping ship in droves. The media painted all kinds of doomsday articles like this, and most were way off. Today, dispensaries thrive and stack hundreds of thousands of dollars, fully knowing they will be knocked down by the feds in a few months and forced to restart again elsewhere. But so what? They made a killing off a plant that grows for pennies in the mean time.

The whirlwind of non rules and fed contradiction created pot shop FFAs, I can go to a pot shop in LA tonight and get 2 hits of wax (thc moonshine) for $5 and be allowed to drive home. Luckily I have a tolerance in common with full grown elephants, but for some this isnt a good deal at all. Concentrate is technically illegal but you can get it most all shops.

/tempted to go take a picture of my plants with some snarky captions written on em

if_i_really_have_to:StoneColdAtheist: Smackledorfer: We dont need a tool, often poorly calibrated, to measure an imperfectly correlated third variable in order to enforce driving sober in a world with legal drugs. Field sobriety testing should be sufficient.

Yep, that's what's done here in Cali where MMJ is legal and widespread, and it seems to work very well. Holds up well in court. Agnostic to the cause of the insobriety. Easy and quick to administer.

Not really. Some medical conditions leave you legal to drive but incapable of passing field sobriety tests. There's needs to be another test available for those cases that doesn't involve dragging the unfortunate sick person in to the county jail every time they get pulled over.

Got a citation or specific case? I ask because the way the CHP described it in the AF's mandatory driver safety class at Travis AFB was that the FST's purpose was to identify "impaired driving", irrespective of the cause of the impairment. It could be booze, drugs, legal drugs (including prescription drugs) or even just plain old fatigue. Per the CHP, if one is too impaired to pass the FST one is too impaired to drive.

IANAL, so can't reply to questions of legality or appropriateness, but that's how it was explained to me.

Also, even when an areas brick n mortar dispensaries are knocked down, they spring back up as delivery services instantly to start regaining some lost profit. Look up any city in southern CA on weedmaps, if they don't have tasty buds at a shop, they've got dozens of guys out delivering it instead.

The feds mainly shut down shops by bullying CA landlords who lease to pot shops. They have a much harder time trying to dismantle established networks of mobile bud sales.

D_Evans45:Also, even when an areas brick n mortar dispensaries are knocked down, they spring back up as delivery services instantly to start regaining some lost profit. Look up any city in southern CA on weedmaps, if they don't have tasty buds at a shop, they've got dozens of guys out delivering it instead.

The feds mainly shut down shops by bullying CA landlords who lease to pot shops. They have a much harder time trying to dismantle established networks of mobile bud sales.

Several months ago I finished up helping a long-time family friend complete his chemo at Stanford (by driving him once a month...he's doing much better now). During his treatment he smoked pot to stave off nausea and help his appetite, and in that six months both of the dispensaries he used were shut down as you describe, and both reopened within a week or so as mobile dispensaries. They even told him to "stock up" as they were feeling the heat, so he never ran low.

To your point, though, you're correct: the Feds have not cut down on MMJ here at all. They just forced it to become even more resilient.

I see a bit of traffic talk. Here in CA, you can be pulled over high off your ass with a pound of pot in your trunk, and you'll be perfectly fine if you have a med card. There are no THC breathalyzers, the cop can know sure as shiat that you're high, but he can't prove it unless he can get you to admit it. Your red eyes are from your severe allergy. I've been pulled over a few times, and got something akin to a misdemeanor open container the one time I had my full pipe laying out in plain view.

/To pigs//They even had to dump my weed out of the pipe, and give it back to me, a glass pipe is not illegal

CrazyCurt:I warned everyone of the coming backlash. Soon they'll be rounding up the cardholders. The entrenched government bureaucracies ( federal, state and local law enforcement, lawyers, prisons, etc ) cannot exist without pot remaining illegal. It will never go away unless a bigger 'cause' emerges. These agencies began in the 1930s when federal agents no longer had alcohol as a targeted revenue source. Do you think they want another repeal of a law that sustains their very livelihoods?

/ you all come down on welfare foodstampers, yet ignore the murderously criminal traitors within

They arent traitors if they are misguided enough to believe saving us from the devils weed will make our country great.